


no shalom no shalom

by bittereternity



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Analysis, Doomed Relationship, Empathy, F/M, Introspection, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Disorder, but not really, dark themes, rather he needs to not lose, sometimes will needs a win too, squint for will/bev
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-07
Updated: 2013-06-07
Packaged: 2017-12-14 05:47:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/833445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittereternity/pseuds/bittereternity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>the person that you'd take a bullet for is behind the trigger. </i><br/>Will finds himself standing on the brink of insanity as he resists falling in love with the hand pushing him off the cliff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no shalom no shalom

**Author's Note:**

> oh, this fandom feeds my muse so effectively! <3 writing will/hannibal scares the hell out of me because they are both such complex, intimidating, rich characters but i hope i've done this justice.  
> the title is taken from Johnny Cash: The Man Comes Around  
> this line in particular means: no peace, no peace  
> the line in the summary is taken from Fall Out Boy: Miss Missing You

*

Is all that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream?

\- Edgar Allan Poe

*

He looks down at the knife in his hand and the steel glints against the moonlight, reflecting the sharp, ragged edges almost pressed to the side of his hand. There is a woman lying on the floor in front of him, looking at him with bloodshot eyes and sweat glistening on her forehead.

There is blood gushing out from a wound on her stomach, staining the white of her dress and flowing into its creases, turning everything around her being into a dull shade of pink.

He feels a jolt of resentment course through him. There is nothing special about her. She was merely in the way, in the wrong place at the wrong time, trying to stop him with a self-righteous aura that he had been too far gone to appreciate. She wasn’t killed for her beauty, for preservation, she simply had to die because she had made him so incredibly angry.

He remembers being angry, sees it in every stab wound, sees it in the blood clotted on her forehead and on different positions of her ribs. He can tell a lot about his actions through these wounds: spurred by anger yet carefully executed, mutilated yet not fatal, directionless yet practiced.

She is looking up at him now, her eyes dilated and pupils blown, her hands shaking and her body slack and pliant, her entire being trembling with the effort to inhale more oxygen. Her hair may have been beautiful once, but now it’s just matted with sweat.

She’s looking at him with bloodshot eyes, pleading with him, appealing to an emotion within him that hasn’t stirred, that remains identified. _Please,_ her eyes seem to say, _please end my pain._

He smiles and feels a rush of excitement at the sheer stench of helplessness.

 _This is my design,_ Will thinks, and plunges the knife into her one final time.

*

He knows Jack is next to him without even looking; Jack’s tension is practically rolling off of him in layers and the atmosphere around him buckles under his sheer presence.

“What do you see, Will?” Jack asks, nearing his field of vision and stuffing his hands in his pockets.

 _You,_ Will almost snaps, but he doesn’t say it out loud. Saying it out loud would require an enthusiasm, a vengeance, a _feeling_ that he isn’t capable of possessing anymore.

“Will, I need you to use your imagination for this,” Jack’s voice is urgent, impatient. Usual.

All Will really wants to do is _stop._

He looks down at his hands. They’re no longer stained with blood, they are unblemished save for the constant itch, the constant flashes of images every time he stares down at his own skin.

He looks sideways and Jack is looking at him with a frown on his face, waiting, expecting.

Will looks away.

They’ve both been through this story before.

*

Hannibal is –

“You have to save yourself, Will,” Hannibal says, sitting across from him in an impeccably crisp three-piece suit, a notebook open on his lap and a fountain pen poised for writing.

His voice echoes within the emptiness of the walls.

Will draws a sharp breath. “Why don’t you have pictures?” he asks instead.

Hannibal doesn’t react – and Will knows this because he’s looking closely, because this is all he’s ever trained for – but there’s the minutest of spasms on one of his cheekbones.

“I’ve found that keeping reminders of things one has lost is hardly a way to move forward,” Hannibal clasps his hands together on his lap and looks directly at him.

The thing is, it would be so easy to get lost right there, at that moment. It simultaneously terrifies and exhilarates Will, the prospect of surrendering to total exhaustion, the prospect of an eternity of compliance and handing over what little grasp he still has on the edges of sanity, of control.

“I’m worried about you, Will,” Hannibal speaks again, an earnestness on his voice that is nowhere near reflected on his posture or on his face.

He clears his throat and looks down at the neatly tied laces of his shoes. “I don’t want to disappear,” he admits quietly. It’s the closest he has come to acknowledging any form of impending insanity.

Hannibal looks at him intently. “Disappear from what, Will?” he asks.

The look on Hannibal’s face suffocates him for a second, not because it shows any judgment or distrust or disrespect, but because it doesn’t show anything at all. That suffocates him too, the idea of having a reign on himself so tight that every encounter with another person is like putting on a suit of armor.

He closes his eyes and leans back on the chair. Times like these, he feels like two contradictory malignant entities occupying the same soul and vying for mutual destruction.

There must be something showing on his face because Hannibal’s next words are soft, weighed down behind implications. “Are you afraid, Will?” he asks.

Will opens his eyes and looks at Hannibal. There’s a flicker of affection in his eyes, a look that flashes only for a mere second but that which conveys an insatiable curiosity, an everlasting intrigue.

“Not of you,” Will finally states, grasping his chair in the anticipation as he watches a curtain fall in place behind Hannibal’s eyes.

Hannibal is many things but he’s not God, this much Will is sure of.

*

9:17 pm. Wolf Trap, Virginia. My name is Will Graham. 9:17 pm. Wolf Trap, Virginia. My na-

He looks around himself and sees nothing but darkness, the blackest of shadows cast by trees in the moonlight. He looks around again, and finds himself standing in the middle of the road, barefoot and scarcely clad in a robe.

He tries to remember.

9:19 pm. Wolf Trap, Virginia. My name is –

The last thing he remembers is lying down on his bed. Not sleeping, never sleeping because the images behind his eyes are too consistent, his memories are too vivid to ever be repressed and his blankets have too low a thread count to keep him fully warm.

He clasps his hands around his middle and tries to feel, tries to understand the weight of himself over his torso. He rubs his hands together for warmth and feels around in his robe for a phone, a flashlight, anything that will illuminate his mind. It surprises him, the curse hidden in all the best of his abilities.

9:22 pm. Wolf Trap, Virginia. My name is Will Graham.

Hannibal had told him that this exercise would keep him alive, that this would convince him of his own existence every time he thought it might be in jeopardy. Instead, all he feels is a laden weight sitting on his chest, blocking the rush of blood to and from his heart. All he feels is a sheer sense of detachment from his surrounding and more scarily, himself.

 _I’m alive I’m alive I’m alive I’m alive,_ he desperately chants to himself, fingering the words like rosary beads between his nails.

9:25 pm. Wolf Trap, Virginia. My name is Will Graham.

He turns around, ties the sash of his rope tightly around himself and starts walking. His toes feel frozen under the rough texture of the road.

9:27 pm. Wolf Trap, Virginia. My name is –

*

“You’re not safe, Will,” Hannibal repeats again at their next meeting and he has to grit his teeth together to refrain from telling him to _stop._

“Are you saying that I can’t do my job?” he asks as casually as possible, the underlying hysteria bubbling under the surface.

He feels Hannibal’s presence behind him, his shadow merging with his own on the glass panes of the window. He can smell the crispness of Hannibal’s shirt, can almost feel the other man’s gaze firmly fixated at a point just over the nape of his neck, can detect the barest hint of Hannibal’s fingernails scraping on his skin.

“I don’t want you to get hurt, Will,” is whispered into his ear, and he stills, feels something within him freeze and burn simultaneously. He tries to turn back but there is no room, Hannibal’s hands are on the wall behind him and there’s nowhere for him to go. He feels ensnared, trapped, released all in one single, fluid motion and looks up to meet Hannibal’s gaze because that’s the only thing for him to do.

“I want to…,” Hannibal pauses, and for the first time there is something wild, something uncontrolled in his voice too. It is exhilarating, the knowledge that _he_ is the one who is causing this. “I want to engulf you, to keep you so safe and out of reach that no one will dare to malign your beauty, that no one will ever get the chance to do anything but admire you from afar.”

Will feels everything go still around him. There is something in Hannibal’s voice, in Hannibal’s words that he can’t detect, a repressed plea for Will to _understand_ , to accept the significance of his words.

Hannibal leans forward slightly and, holding him by both shoulders, kisses him on the forehead. “You’re a beauty, Will,” he murmurs, “I wish you didn’t let others ruin you.”

 Will can feel his hot breath on his eyelashes, on the crinkles at the corner of his eyes, on the tip of noise. The feeling sets him on fire. He clears his throat internally and tries to say something, anything –

And his phone rings. He knows, without looking, that it’s from Jack.

As suddenly as they appeared, Hannibal’s arms move back to rest by his sides, and Will is free. He draws in a long, shaky breath and feels something within his chest loosen, feels grateful for the immense ability to breathe again.

“I have to go,” he holds up his phone as a form of justification, a mild tenor of apology in his voice for a mistake he’s not even sure of making in the first place

*

“This one’s really bad, Will,” Jack says instead of _hello_ over the phone. “How soon can you be here?”

Will clears his throat again and suddenly itches for some water to rectify his parched throat. “I’ll be there in thirty,” he manages to croak out and snaps the phone shut.

He sits for a long while behind his steering wheel. The spot on his forehead where Hannibal had kissed him scorches within him, burns with the promise of a constant, invisible reminder. There is a slow ache growing in his chest and all of a sudden, he feels hollow at the prospect of no arms ensnaring him, at the prospect of having too much room around himself to exist in.

_Who do I run from, where do I go._

He wonders vaguely if today’s the day he’s going to break after all.

*

He feels eyes on him from every angle, some looking at him with a vague sense of concern, but most looking at him with a mix of fascination and disgust. He closes his eyes and tries to concentrate on feeling, on empathizing, on discerning the clues hidden within the sacrilege but his concentration is interrupted with flashes of Hannibal’s hands -- his breath hot on his own shoulder, his scent merging with his own—until every attempt to profile a killer turns into an image of Hannibal in his mind.

He staggers back.

Beverly comes up next to him and gives him a bottle of water, clutching a ziplock bag with scorched hair for evidence in her other hand.

“Everything alright?” she asks.

He takes a few large gulps of water to try and counteract his harsh breathing. “I’m fine,” he spits out.

Beverly doesn’t look like she’s even trying to buy his lie. She looks at him appraisingly from head to toe, and he’s perfectly aware of every single incriminating bead of sweat and twitch of muscle exposing him to her.

“This won’t break you,” she tells him quietly, seeming out of the blue.

He turns so sharply to look at her that he fears whiplash.

She shrugs, an indiscernible movement of her shoulders. “You’re already broken, is what I mean,” she tells him, a laugh in her voice in a way that he can’t figure out how serious she is. “You know, to _pieces._ There’s nothing here that will break you any further.”

He looks down, pushes a stray lock of hair off his forehead. “I don’t think that’s as comforting as you think it is,” he mutters.

She doesn’t laugh, but her eyes fold around the corners and she pats him lightly on the shoulder as she heads out.

He feels something settle in his chest, breathes a little easier.

*

Blood – dark red blood is all he sees.

He’s standing over a family – _dead,_ unconscious after the first bullet wound and murdered subsequently – and there’s a gun in his hand. He’s certain that the ballistic reports will match the bullets to his gun. He is also certain of his fingerprints all over the gun.

He looks around, tries to make any kind of sense of it, and then there’s a pressure on his shoulders. He turns back and there’s Hannibal, still impeccable in this suit and polished shoes, unruffled by the blood flowing out everywhere.

He gasps audibly. Hannibal moves closer to him. “You’re crying, Will,” he tells him softly.

Will brings up a trembling hand and touches his cheeks. His hand comes back wet, except the wetness isn’t a transparent liquid originating from his lachrymal glands. The wetness on his hands is crimson, staining his fingers as the blood gently rolls towards his fingertips and settles in the crevices of his nails.

“I… what…,” he looks up desperately towards Hannibal.

Hannibal looks at him with an incredible amount of sadness, gently strokes his head in soothing, circular motions. Then, Will watches in morbid fascination as Hannibal reaches down and gently repositions the gun in his hand.

“You have to kill yourself, Will,” Hannibal’s voice trembles with unshed tears. Will looks up, looks from his face to the blood staining his own cheeks and trailing downwards. Instinctively, he throws himself at Hannibal, clasping his hand behind Hannibal’s back and engulfing him within his arms. Hannibal’s heartbeat is steady, still against the pounding of his own heart.

He feels Hannibal’s arms around him for a moment before the latter straightens and releases him. Hannibal bends down and releases the safety of the gun before placing it back in his hands.

“You have to die, Will,” he repeats again, sounding terribly apologetic. There are tears on his cheeks too, colorless, not red.

Will nods dumbly and brings the gun to his temple and releases his finger from the trigger.

The last thing he sees is a slight smile on Hannibal’s face and then there is blood, blood gushing out from everywhere, from himself, from the walls, from the corpses on the floor, and he can see nothing but red –

He wakes up, gasping and panting and tries to remain still on his bed. In a distance, he can hear one of his strays barking away to glory. He shakes his head to clear his thought and –

He remembers what he dreamt of, all of a sudden with a blinding vividity. Something deep within the depths of the fog in his minds _clicks,_ snaps into place. The missing pieces in the corner of his mind fall together in a perfect jigsaw.

Blood - Erythrocytes, leucocytes, lymphocytes, eosinophils, basophils, platelets, clotting factors –

Will isn’t a doctor, no, but he is very good at what he does. 

*

“Did you kill someone?” Will asks Hannibal directly as soon as he enters for his next therapy hour. There is no point beating around a proverbial bush in his mind.

Hannibal pauses, but only for a moment. “I was a surgeon,” he replies. “I’m sure I’ve inadvertently--”

Will laughs, a hollow and empty sound that ricochets around the room. “That’s not what I mean,” he interrupts, “and you know it.”

Hannibal sighs. Out of the corner of his eye, Will sees him removing his waistcoat and placing it neatly on the back of his chair. “Oh, Will,” Hannibal almost coos and drops elegantly, gracefully into the seat opposite him.

“How long were you going to let me live?” Will asks, not out of fear, but because of genuine, morbid curiosity. He feels calm, like all the voices in his head have quieted down, like a weight has been lifted off of him with the relief of finding out, of discovering the truth. _Guess I was meant to be a profiler after all,_ he thinks bitterly.

There’s that flicker of affection in Hannibal’s eyes again. “I wouldn’t have let you die,” he states, sounding almost affronted.

And Will understands.

“No, you wouldn’t have,” he agrees. “You wanted me to turn into a version of yourself.” It’s not a question.

Hannibal sighs dreamily, a faraway look in his eyes. “Imagine me and you against the world, Will,” he murmurs, an aura of awe surrounding his voice. “We will be glorious together.”

Will laughs again, mostly to stop the hysteria creeping into him, and clutches at his hair. There’s a sound that sounds like it’s coming from far away, until he realizes that it’s his phone that’s ringing. He snaps it open and it’s Jack.

Sighing, he stands up but Hannibal is quicker on his feet, leaping up to his own defense like an agile dear. He approaches Will and rubs his arms with his own. Pulling Will closer to himself, he tips his own face down so that their lips are touching, and they’re so close that Will can taste alcohol on his lips, can smell charred meat – _oh god –_ on his breath.

“How can I let you go, Will?” Hannibal murmurs in a way that makes the hair on Will’s arms rise up. He looks up at Hannibal, and there’s a flash of something, _something_ Will can’t discern and as soon as Hannibal sees him looking, the armor falls back into place.

He grips Will’s arms tighter and suddenly, in an instance of magnificent clarity, he _understands._

“ _You’re a beauty, Will,”_ Hannibal had murmured and he had looked at him with the same expression flashing behind his eyes. Except, Will had thought, he had thought –

It had been fear all along, he realizes suddenly.

And suddenly it’s easier to breathe, to think, to extricate himself from Hannibal’s arms, as soon as he knows that he isn’t the only one who has had a charm, an illusory depth cast over him.

“You will let me go,” he informs Hannibal gently, yet firmly, “because you love me.”

Hannibal looks away and his ears pound with the rush of victory thrumming within him. He moves forward to grab his coat. “If you want to ruin me with your love,” he whispers to Hannibal on his way out, “you have to let me live.”

He lets himself out before he can hear Hannibal’s reply.

*

He sits in his car for a few long minutes once he reaches the BAU, trying to get the onset of palpitations of his heart within control. The phone is insistent in his pocket, ringing constantly, reminding him of murder victims waiting for him for vindication.

3:44 pm. Quantico, Virginia. My name is Will Graham.

He already knows he won’t tell Jack about it. Not yet, anyway. Logically,  he tells himself it’s because he has no proof. Not even a confession. There is nothing concrete tying Hannibal to _anything_ other than the lightness in his throat and the constant, building ache in his chest.

3:49 pm. Quantico, Virginia. My name is Will Graham.

He raises his hand to his cheek and is genuinely surprised when it comes back wet with tears.

3: 55 pm. Quantico, Virginia. My name is Will Graham. _Am I_ –

He puts one foot forward towards the BAU, feels a piece of him chipped away in time.

\-- _alive_.

*

He takes an ungodly amount of pleasure at the barely concealed surprise on Hannibal’s face when he knocks on the door of his office.

“Do I need to call my lawyer, Will?” is the first thing Hannibal asks and he holds up his hands in mock-surrender, indicates that he’s come alone.

“You came back,” Hannibal states, and Will knows it’s the closest he has come to genuine confusion.

“Case finished early,” he replies and accept the outstretched glass of… well, something resembling wine from Hannibal.

Hannibal looks at him with a tinge of sadness. “I feel like I’ve made you angry, somehow,” he finally says.

Will drums his fingers on his lap. “Not angry,” he corrects. “I… I’m a little… why _me_?” he blurts out.

Hannibal leans in and tucks a strand of his hair behind his ear. “You take my breath away,” he whispers with an intensity of reverence that makes Will’s skin tingle and kindles a flame in his belly. “You were so, so beautiful and tainted when you came in,” Hannibal continues. “How can it not be you?”

Something catches in Will’s throat. “How long are you going to keep me?” he asks, closing his eyes against the answer.

Will feels his face being outlined, etched by one of Hannibal’s fingers. Something about the way Hannibal carves his fingers over his torso makes him shiver like he’s being _appraised,_ being memorized, yet he can’t help but arch into his touch.

“Forever,” Hannibal whispers, trailing feather-light kisses over his arm. “I would keep your forever, as long as it takes to consume every bit of your spirit."

The intensity, the sheer _truth_ in Hannibal’s voice makes his heart hurt. Working on nothing but intuition, he leans in, raises himself up and presses a kiss on Hannibal’s cheek, and feels his eyes close of their own accord.

He separates himself to grab his coat from the chair and puts it back on, feeling Hannibal’s eyes on him until he turns to say goodbye.

“I’ll see you Monday, Will,” Hannibal’s voice is soothing, calm, reassured. “I’ll bring some coffee for you between classes.

Will laughs, rich and genuine and a stark contrast to his nerves beforehand. “You will,” he agrees, and walks out of the office without looking back.

*

It’s a long drive, the way back from Hannibal’s office, and he lists at least five exits that he could’ve taken to justify the futility of his destination. Instead, he finds himself parking his car on the driveway and knocking firmly on the door.

There’s a pause from the other side before he hears the latch being undone and then the door is opened. Beverly doesn’t look surprised to see him there, even though he knows he’s the last person she would expect, even though he knows that she had been sleeping judging by the handprint on her cheek and the mismatched slippers on her feet. She looks at him with a half-raised eyebrow and doesn’t expect anything at all.

He wants to run, run rather than stay put in the face of the easy, open expression in her eyes. But he doesn’t. He raises a hand in a half-wave and takes a deep breath. He’s aware that almost nothing will change if he does this, he’s aware that he can go back now and this will all blow over, he is aware that _everything_ will change if he asks her this.

“Sorry to disturb you,” he starts, “but will you let me draw a clock for you?”

Most of all, he’s aware of the verity behind admitting to a problem and asking for help.

Beverly frowns and stares at him quizzically. He sighs and lets his shoulders slump. “I may be… struggling,” he manages around the bitterness of the words and the relief of hearing them out loud.

She doesn’t say anything in reply; instead, she leaves the door open and makes her way back in. Taking a last calming breath, he follows her inside.

The world will continue to spin madly around him tomorrow, he knows, but everything is in stasis for tonight. 

*


End file.
